Film
Maori Shakespeare & Tongan Ninjas
This Year’s Hawaii International Film Festival Had A Strong Pacific Islands Presence
Embracing cultural diversity and honoring films that promote cultural understanding, the 21st Hawaii International Film Festival took place in Honolulu and the neighbor islands this November. This year’s Festival highlighted films from Korea, but there were also many entries dealing with Pacific Islands stories and people.
The Maori Merchant of Venice, directed by Don C. Selwyn and produced by Ruth Kaupua, received the Blockbuster Audience Award for Best Feature Film. This timeless Shakespeare story presented by Maori actors in their own language resonates with issues like love, trust, justice and mercy—issues that are as complicated today as when the play was written.
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Tatau Samoa, by German director Glsa Schleelein and Producer Carl Ludwig Rettinger, retraces the life of Samoan tattoo master, Paulo Sulu’ape, who practices his art in New York and New Zealand—maintaining an artistic integrity regardless of locations far from his native Samoa.
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Films from Australia dealt with diverse topics. Beneath Clouds, written and directed by Ivan Sen and produced by Teresa-Jayne Hanlon, follows the roadside journey of two teenagers, an angry Aboriginal boy and girl of Irish descent. They come of age in the arid, rural countryside of Australia. It concerns justice or a “fair go” for an Aboriginal man in 1959 Adelaide—and its consequences for the parties involved and Australian society. Australia Rules, directed by Paul Goldman and produced by Mark Lazarus, is a many-layered story of a local football club from rural South Australia that gets a chance to play in a championship tournament. Key players on the team are Aboriginal, but only one white youth named “Blacky” transgresses the Australian rules that are meant to be broken.
From New Zealand, Tongan Ninja, directed by Jason Stutter and produced by Andrew Calder, presents another Polynesian warrior who pokes fun at himself along with various movie heroes.
Who Am I?, by a young Polish filmmaker, Anna Sierpinska’s is a sad documentary on the suicide of a 24-year-old Samoan youth. Identity, alienation, sexual ambiguity, lack of meaningful work, all were problems that became insurmountable for Tony, who befriended Anna when she visited Samoa and asked her to “tell his last chapter.”
Featured films included a director’s cut of Utu, the classic Maori film, and Act of War from Hawaii.
This year a spring festival will also take place in Honolulu—and hopefully it will include more Pacific Island films.
